Economics 101

In the middle of a piece about how college students are feeling the pinch because there are fewer options for paying for college, we get in to some basic Economics 101:

Costs are not just things for government to help people to pay. Costs are telling us something that is dangerous to ignore.

The inadequacy of resources to produce everything that everyone wants is the fundamental fact of life in every economy -- capitalist, socialist or feudal. This means that the real cost of anything consists of all the other things that could have been produced with those same resources.

Building a bridge means using up resources that could have been used building homes or a hospital. Going to college means using up vast amounts of resources that could be used for all sorts of other things.

Prices force people to economize. Subsidizing prices enables people to take more resources away from other uses without having to weigh the real cost.

Without market prices that convey the real costs of resources denied to alternative users, people waste.

And money is not a Federal "stuff stamps" program. It's not the government's responsibility to make sure you have enough for everything you want. More to the point, it's not something that's distributed by some government program, and where "unfairness" in its distribution calls for government to come in and "redistribute" it.